Guards! Guards! (audiobook) by Terry Pratchett, narrated by Nigel Planer

Guards! Guards! is fantasy, Book 8 in the Discworld series.

Review:

If you look up the wonderful “Discworld Reading Order” guide, this is listed as the first of the City Watch novels. The mostly ineffectual Night Watch, consisting of Captain Vimes, Sergeant Colon, Corporal Nobbs, and Carrot Ironfoundersson, the Watch's new volunteer, finds itself dealing with a secret brotherhood and the dragon the brotherhood has called into being. They receive help from Lady Sybil Ramkin, a swamp dragon breeder, and the Librarian of the Unseen University, an orangutan.

Raising Steam (audiobook) by Terry Pratchett, read by Stephen Briggs

Raising Steam is the last Discworld novel published before Pratchett's death. I don't think it would be a good place for newbies to start. Maybe go with Going Postal instead?

I've opted not to include a read-alikes list with this post.

Review:

This is the third Discworld novel to feature Moist von Lipwig as a protagonist. I've listened to the first, Going Postal, many times and fully expected to love Raising Steam. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work for me.

In this book, the Discworld gets its first locomotives. Dick Simnel, a self-taught engineer, invents and improves the things, spending a great deal of time on his pride and joy, Iron Girder (while listening, I thought it was spelled Iron Gerda). Sir Harry King, looking for something more respectable to attach his name to than waste and sanitation, agrees to finance Dick's project, and Vetinari assigns Moist von Lipwig to the project as a government representative. Moist's charm and quick thinking come in handy as he struggles to get the land agreements necessary for the locomotive project to be successful. Meanwhile, Vetinari is adamant that the train must go to Überwald, and his timetable may be tighter than even Moist can handle. Dwarfish fundamentalists in Überwald and Ankh-Morpork add another level of difficulty.

Terry Pratchett's Going Postal (live action TV series), via Netflix

Terry Pratchett's Going Postal is a 3-hour long fantasy TV series (miniseries?) based on Terry Pratchett's book. I've reviewed the audiobook version of Going Postal.

There are some slight spoilers in my post.

Synopsis:

Moist von Lipwig is a con man who finds his choices drastically reduced when he is captured and presented before Lord Vetinari. Faced with either certain death or becoming the new Postmaster and resurrecting Ankh-Morpork's postal service, Moist understandably chooses to become the new Postmaster. After a failed attempt to escape his new job, Moist gets to work and keeps an eye open for ways he might come out on top. One of the first things Moist does is learn what makes his two employees tick. To the elderly Tolliver Groat, the most important thing is being promoted. To Stanley, it's pins. Stanley is a very enthusiastic pin collector.

It's not long before Moist finds out that the fates of the previous Postmasters, and he begins to worry that the curse that got them will get him too, especially when the letters crammed into the Post Office start making him see visions of all the victims of the supposedly victim-less crimes he committed. Unfortunately for him, one of those victims turns out to be Adora Belle Dearheart, the woman he has fallen head-over-heels in love with.

Somehow, Moist has to get the postal service running smoothly again, deal with some truly cutthroat competition, actually deliver everything he promises, and convince Miss Dearheart to trust him again after she finds out the truth of what he did.

Review:

I had a lot of fun with this one, which is not to say it didn't have its issues. I do consider it to be better than the other Discworld adaptation I've seen, The Colour of Magic. Rincewind, the main character in that one, is probably my least favorite character in the entire Discworld series. Moist is so much more fun to watch than him.

Going Postal (audio book) by Terry Pratchett, performed by Stephen Briggs

This is the 33rd book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, but that doesn't mean those who are new to the series can't read it, too. In fact, I'd recommend this over the first book in the series.

Synopsis: 

Moist von Lipwig is a con man who has stolen a lot of money and gotten caught. Lord Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, gives him a choice between certain death and becoming Ankh-Morpork's new Postmaster. Moist understandably chooses the latter option.

Ankh-Morpork's Post Office used to be a well-oiled machine, reliable and respected. However, it has seen better days, and all previous efforts to build it back up to its former functioning glory have failed. The two remaining employees, Tolliver Groat and Stanley Howler, stick around pretty much because they have nowhere else to go and nowhere else they'd like to be. The Post Office itself is stuffed full of undelivered mail.

Although Moist is a criminal, he has never purposefully hurt anyone, and he's not really a bad person. The longer he works at the Post Office, the more he starts to enjoy his job. He hires anyone he can find to help deliver the mail. He invents stamps, which immediately become hugely popular. Things seem to be going well, until his rival, the guy who owns Ankh-Morpork's clacks (the Discworld's version of telegraphs), decides he's had enough of this new threat to his communications monopoly.

Review:

It's been a while since I read any Discworld books. I had forgotten how enjoyable and funny this series was, and Going Postal was an excellent reminder. This wasn't the first time I read it, but I read it long enough ago that I had forgotten most of it.

One of the things I loved about this book was that Pratchett was able to take something that, in our world, is ordinary (stamps) and make it a revolutionary new idea in the Discworld. Plus, Moist's idea for stamps came about in a natural way. He didn't suddenly think, “Well, we could get the bank back on track by selling little squares of paper. We'll call them 'stamps.'” He first learned how things worked at the Post Office, then questioned the way things had always been done. His previous experience as a forger gave him ideas for what he wanted the new stamps to be like, and he revised and expanded his ideas as he received input from various citizens. Instead of feeling tacked on, Discworld's new stamps felt like a natural and believable part of the world.

Nation (book) by Terry Pratchett

Ermintrude (who renames herself "Daphne") is on the ship the Sweet Judy, on her way to joining her father. Mau has survived his time on the Boys' Island and in on his way back to his family, to celebrate becoming a man. Both of them are left alone, their lives horribly disrupted, when a giant wave destroys the Sweet Judy and many of the small islands in the area.

Everyone Mau has ever known and loved is dead, and he hears the voices of the Grandfathers in his head, telling him he must rebuild the Nation. It takes a while, but Mau comes to realize that he no longer believes in the Grandfathers' idea of the Nation. If the gods really exist, why did they let the Nation be destroyed? What are all the traditions for, and what is the Nation, really?

Daphne has spent her whole life being told by her grandmother that she could become a queen if 138 people were to die, which is why she spent her life being schooled in useless things rather than doing what she really wants to do, which is study science. After her mother and the child she carried both die during childbirth, her father leaves to do his studies on a faraway island, which is where Daphne was going when the wave hit. Unsure of whether her father survived the wave, and completely unaware of the fact that 138 of the right people have died back at home, Daphne begins to get to know Mau. At first, she is frightened of him, but gradually they learn to communicate, and Daphne starts to get past the years of "gentle lady" training her grandmother instilled in her. Soon, other survivors join them, and they create a new, somewhat damaged Nation.

Mau is forced to rethink the necessity of traditions and gods. As he and the other survivors live off of the wreckage of the Judy, Mau agonizes over his people's place in the world, when it seems as though Daphne's people have done so much better than his. He had thought his Nation was huge, but he discovers, after meeting Daphne and other survivors, that his island is only a small speck on the map of the world. However, by the end of the story, he and Daphne have made discoveries that prove that Mau's people are something like the fathers of the scientific world - and Daphne is not going to let her people trample all over that and diminish it.

I've loved Pratchett's books for years. Lots of his books have a serious side, with a healthy dollop of funny to make things go down easier. This book is serious, with the occasional flash of funny (in all kinds of flavors - quirky, dark, odd, etc.), but the funny stuff doesn't have nearly the same feel as the funny stuff in his Discworld books - there's a darker, more poignant feel to it all. It definitely still reads like something he's written, but, at the same time, it feels entirely different from anything else of his that I've read before. Then again, maybe it's just been too long since I last read one of his books.

Anyway, there were times this book had me near tears. It's heartbreaking, reading about Mau right after the wave, as he takes care of the bodies of all those who were killed. There are those who may be angry at Mau's frequent questioning of and anger with the gods (although admittedly I haven't stumbled across any complaints online), but I think his reaction was only natural. He was taught that the gods will protect his people if they do everything just so, and now all his people are dead - if everything he was told about the gods were true, how could this have happened? Daphne, too, has to figure things out, as she is still healing the emotional wounds inflicted by the death of her mother. Neither of them have easy questions to wrestle with, and I can't help but wonder if some of this stems from Pratchett's own experiences with dealing with early onset Alzheimer's.

I truly loved this book. The only thing I didn't really like was the ending, when Pratchett jumps forward many generations to show us that this story was being told by an old man to a couple children. All three of them live on Mau's island, which is now apparently the seat of world's scientific studies. It was a convenient way for Pratchett to tell readers what happened to Mau and Daphne after the story, but I felt it took me too much out of the story. I have to admit, though, that I agree with the little girl - I, too, would have liked it if Mau and Daphne had ended up together in the end. Ah well, at least Daphne didn't let the Nation get squished.

Hmm - as far as my read-alikes go, although Nation is apparently intended for young adults, the books I'm recommending aren't. However, I'm guessing most young adults who could handle Nation would probably do fine with most of the things in my list. Use your own judgement.

Read-alikes and Watch-alikes:

• A Dirty Job (book) by Christopher Moore - Charlie Asher is very much the beta male type, an average guy with an average life who doesn't really want more. Unfortunately, his wife doesn't survive the birth of their first child, and Charlie, who even under better circumstances is a bit neurotic, is left to raise their daughter. Although he gets help from friends and family, how's he supposed to deal with everything when he discovers his daughter's talent for causing things to die, hears menacing whispers in the streets, and finds out he has to locate people who are dead or about to die and collect their soul vessels? Those who'd like another book that mixes seriousness with humor and deals with grief and death might want to try this.
  
• American Gods (book) by Neil Gaiman - Shadow gets out of prison early, but it's too late to continue his life as it was before he went to prison. His wife and his best friend are both dead, killed in a car crash. With not much else to do, Shadow ends up traveling with a mysterious man named Wednesday, who is actually an old god, better known as Odin. Wednesday is gathering up the other old gods in America to wage a war against the new gods of the Internet, television, etc. Those who'd like another book dealing with, among lots of other things, death, gods, and religion might want to try this. It's darker and grittier than Nation.
• Lost (live action TV series) - When their plane crashes in the middle of nowhere, the survivors must figure out how to live together. The island they find themselves on holds many strange and potentially deadly secrets - and many of the survivors also have secrets of their own. Quite a few of the initial scenes and episodes of this show remind me a great deal of Nation - in both, characters have to figure out how to survive and how to coexist despite lifestyle and cultural differences.
  
• Life of Pi (book) by Yann Martel - Teenage Pi Patel, his family, and their menagerie (Pi's father is a zookeeper) are on their way to Canada when they are shipwrecked. Pi survives and is trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, an orangutan, and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Things get gruesome and bloody, until finally it's just Pi and Richard Parker, trying to survive for months together. It's been a while since I've read this, but I remember finding the story surreal and fascinating, and the ending blew me away. Those who'd like another book that deals with survival, death, and faith might want to try this.